Tuesdays Are a Disease
Earthside. 18 years later. 6 months before Hogwarts. 5:00 PM. A perfectly wretched Tuesday.
Seraphina Liliana Lily Potter-Peverell—aged seventeen, five feet of celestial wrath wrapped in questionable tea addiction—was curled into a chipped, stolen teacup like it was a religious relic. Which, frankly, it was. Porcelain white, rimmed in roses, and pilfered with ceremony from Petunia Dursley's locked cupboard three years prior. A chip cracked the edge just right—battle damage. That cup had history. It had survived. It was, essentially, her soulmate.
She stared into the empty cup like it owed her money.
There was no tea. There never was. Not proper tea. Not her tea. What passed for tea in this household tasted like someone had boiled old socks and anxiety in lukewarm bathwater. But it was all she had, and it wasn't going to steep itself, now was it?
Down the hallway, her "family" screamed at each other over a microwave meal and what appeared to be an argument over who had eaten the last frozen fish stick. Seraphina, exiled as usual, sat in her room—which was not a room at all, but the cupboard beneath the stairs. It was narrow, miserable, and full of spiders she'd come to admire more than her guardians. The walls were cracked with age and hate. The ceiling leaked exactly once a week, and that was on Tuesdays. Of course.
Tuesdays were cursed. Had been since the beginning.
Today had started with her being shoved against a locker by Dudley's sentient garbage disposal of a best friend, who had thoughtfully called her a "witchy freak with mummy issues." It was funny. Hilarious, even. If Seraphina did have mummy issues, they'd probably look like:
1. My mother was a Death Fae.
2. My mother died violently.
3. I remember all of it in vivid, bloody HD.
So yes. She had issues. Just not the kind therapy could fix. Unless that therapy involved ritual sacrifice and six pounds of quartz.
"You should smile more," one of the teachers had offered in the kind of tone that made her want to commit something very un-educational with a fountain pen.
She hadn't smiled. She'd stared.
That was usually enough.
By 6:00 PM, she was back in the cupboard. Dinner in this house was a tragedy best avoided. Petunia, bone-thin and bitterness-shaped, had a jaw clenched like a Victorian ghost. Vernon, meanwhile, was three-and-a-half cholesterol pills from cardiac betrayal, and currently demanding someone serve him breakfast—for dinner—because the man was a walrus in a skin suit who considered pancakes a personality.
Seraphina, meanwhile, made her own food. Quietly. After they left. It usually involved a lot of stolen crackers, creative spices, and tears.
She didn't cry for sympathy. She cried because onions were a privilege. No one had to know the difference.
The only one who got her was Vespera.
Currently curled around a heating pad shaped like a cat, Vespera was a violet garden snake. With lilac shimmer and sarcasm in her eyes. She was also definitely not a normal snake, unless normal snakes could whisper in Parseltongue and express intense hatred for Vernon's existence.
"Your pig-man nearly tried the door again this morning," Vespera hissed softly, tongue flicking like punctuation. "I hissed. He squealed. It was delightful."
"Remind me to make you a crown out of spoon heads," Seraphina muttered, slouched against her pillow, one leg curled beneath her. "I think you're owed several titles. Duchess of Venom. Lady of Don't-Touch-My-Tail. Queen of Passive-Aggressive Hissing."
"He'll die eventually. His blood pressure sounds like a kettle under siege."
Seraphina snorted into her pillow. "Let me dream, Vespera. Don't tease me with hope."
She didn't look human. Not really.
She tried. She wore drab clothes, kept her silver hair tied up in a loose, messy bun. She avoided eye contact. She never spoke unless she had to. But people felt it. The wrongness. The difference. That sense that she was something else. Something hungry. Something beautiful in the way old weapons are beautiful.
Her skin had that too-perfect glow. Her curves were curved in a way that should have required three warnings and a license in seventeen countries. It was stupid. She barely ate. Half her meals were cold toast and petty vengeance.
She had no idea that her body was the physical signature of a Keja-Class Omega—ancient bloodline queens known for making alphas weep and empires burn. She just thought puberty had glitched and was playing a long, inappropriate prank.
She sighed.
She hated this life.
Hated the pretending. Hated the food. Hated the gnawing sense of not right. She remembered what had happened 18 years ago. She remembered her mother's kiss. Her father's scythe. The cracking of wards like bones being stepped on.
She remembered them. The ones who came in the night.
She remembered Dumbledore's face—too kind, too bright, like a priest at a funeral pretending your house hadn't just been swallowed by Hell.
She'd been told she was crazy for remembering. "Children don't remember trauma that young," the school counselor had said, peering at her like she was a psychosis in Mary Janes.
She wasn't crazy.
She was cursed.
By blood. By truth. By Tuesday.
The house was quiet again. Vernon had gone to his armchair. Petunia was microwaving sausages at a pitch that suggested war crimes. Dudley was drooling over a television show about girls who didn't wear enough clothes and somehow passed math.
And Seraphina? She was counting down the minutes to 3:00 AM.
She didn't know why. She just felt it. Something was coming.
Vespera shifted. "You smell tense."
"I'm always tense."
"Tens-er than normal."
She didn't answer. She just looked at her chipped teacup. The only thing in this cursed house that ever looked at her and didn't try to shove her into a metaphorical cage.
She reached for the locket around her neck the only thing she had left of her parents. Inside: a moving picture of James and Lily Peverell, smiling at her, waving, unaware they were being immortalized in the moment before the apocalypse.
"I don't belong here," she whispered.
"No," Vespera agreed. "You don't."
And outside, the wind hissed through the hedges like a whispering army.
The air tasted electric.
But for now, it was still.
Quiet.
Just another awful, meatloaf-flavored Tuesday.
And Seraphina didn't know it, but three o'clock was waiting.